


Rosé

by hemotyping



Series: brucetalks [1]
Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcoholic Tony Stark, Angry Bruce, Bruce Banner Has Issues, Childhood Memories, Domestic Violence, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kinda, Memories, POV Bruce Banner, Parent Death, Past Character Death, Past Child Abuse, Prose Poem, no happiness for bruce banner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 14:13:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12866214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hemotyping/pseuds/hemotyping
Summary: How many times do I have to tell you there's nothing worth waiting for?(Tony's been drinking too much, too often. Bruce hasn't had a drink in years, and it's all bringing back memories. Some things come in cycles. Rated M for alcohol abuse, Bruce's backstory, and lots of swearing.)





	Rosé

**Author's Note:**

> Bruce and Tony's timeline here is based on Earth-616, where they met at a college lecture years before Bruce's incident. The rest is pretty much MCU standard, not particularly canon-divergent.

How many times do I have to tell you there’s nothing worth waiting for?

No apocalypse is encroaching. No unstoppable biochemical weapons of mass destruction are coming to tear you away from the habits you’re drinking to. The only end I see when I look around is the clear base of your cool glass, the credits rolling on a TV no one’s watching.

How many times do I have to tell you that sometimes the fight is nothing but _here_ , nothing but your heartbeat or lack thereof and how tightly you can hold yourself down, nothing but a half-empty box of wine in an all-empty desert?

You and I of all people know we’ve always been who we make ourselves, for better or for worse. But these days, we’re getting tired; the world is heavy on your shoulders and I’m a full fourteen hundred pounds of it.

These nights, we’re so much more than we were when we started, so much bigger than bedroom floors and liquor-stained breath.

* * *

 

The only time I ever drank with you was the night we shared our battle scars. We were young and immortal, and I was drop-dead wasted and sobbing just from trying to make a fucking peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a dorm room or a penthouse or my mother’s kitchen, and you were barely slurring. That was the night we laughed, the night we cried, the night we told our stories and raged against our shadows. That was the night I hurled a jar of peanut butter through a window and claimed it was to feed the stupid fucking pigeons on the stupid fucking street below, and that was the night I broke three game boards because I didn’t want to lose. No. Because I didn’t want to play. And neither of us gave a thought to putting the pieces back together.

“I didn’t fall down,” I told you from where I laid on the musty carpet. "I'm not that drunk."

“No,” you said, gesturing to the empty tequila bottles and chess pieces scattered across the floor, “we just keep tripping over all these fucking legacies our dads left everywhere.” At least, that’s what I heard.

We were less scarred back then, but we stood back to back and compared old wounds all the same.

* * *

 

The first time I tasted alcohol was in the upholstery of my least favorite sofa; in the air, mixed with the bitter aftertaste of gunfire to make the shittiest cocktail ever. It filled the room like my father’s voice, because it was my father’s voice, until it got too thick for my mother to breathe, and so she didn’t. The cops said it was a dispute, the defense said it was a mistake, the judge said he was an alcoholic, and my father said it was my fault, and so I never drank again. No. The first time I tasted alcohol was in the stem of my mother’s wine glass. She always liked to have a chipped glass of rosé in the evening while she read her checkout-line tabloid-adjacent paperback romances, you know. That’s one of the only things I remember about her. I don’t remember the color of her eyes, sure, but I’ll be cold and fucking dead by the time I forget the smell of her cheap box wine.

She let me taste it once, because I asked. I didn’t understand why she was allowed to drink it but I wasn’t, and she laughed when I spat it out. Her hair was always perfect, and her clothes were always almost as bright as her smile, until she started getting tired. Until the beer on my father’s breath started turning her rosé to red, darker than my skinned knees and the circles under her eyes but not nearly as dark as my bruises. So I sat on the ground at her funeral to be as close to her as possible, and I poured her favorite-least-favorite boxes of wine onto her casket, and I drank what was left and swallowed it all like it was her greatest and final gift to me.

It’s easier to remember her death than her life. For all my PhDs, I still don’t know how the fuck anyone’s supposed to avoid depression when we’re all hard-wired to remember tragedy and trauma clearer than happiness. But then again, maybe if I remembered her better I’d remember how much I probably miss her.

* * *

 

The last time I tasted alcohol was at the dusty roadside bar closest to my lab, or maybe the one farthest away. I got too drunk, like I always did when I drank, which was not very often, and I danced with anybody who looked at me the right way and I shouted to the sagging wood ceiling that I was the best fucking archaeologist the world had ever seen. We were a hurricane, in exactly the way the desert needed rain.

“Hey, big guy,” Betty said. “Come home with me.”

“I’m always home when I’m with you,” is what I meant to say and what I should’ve said. But my next whiskey slipped out of my hand and shattered on the floor, and I punched a guy who looked at me the wrong way and I kept on yelling and dancing and drinking. I drank until the tumbleweed danced with me, just three or four or twelve songs with shot glasses too big for my self-esteem. Out in the desert where all the shadiest government research happens, the bartenders don’t cut you off.

“Hey, asshole,” Betty said. “Don’t come home.”

“I love you,” I told her. “But I’ve got a lot of anger to work through, and the average human lifespan is only seventy-nine years.”

“I know,” she said before she was gone, and our pickup truck went with her.

Somewhere along the night, I called you and I told you I was going to design a new goddamn supersoldier, a whole new and improved Captain America to make the world _such a better fucking place_ , and I was doing it for you but also for me and once I was done we could tell the ghosts of our fathers that haunted the bottoms of our respective glasses to eat shit.

A little ways into the morning, I woke up sprawled in the driveway of one of those ghost town 7-11s with a half-empty box of rosé in my hand. Head pounding, I crawled under the gas station awning to hide from the sunlight and oncoming traffic, and within a few minutes you pulled up in a rental sportscar.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in New York?” I asked.

“Yeah,” you said, “but Betty sent me to find you.”

I think you said more, but my ears weren’t working too well. I nodded and forced myself and all my emotional baggage into the passenger seat. You offered me sunglasses, and I offered you my box of wine because the stains it had left on my shirt were turning into the color of my mother’s eyes. “I’m done drinking,” I said, and it stuck.

* * *

 

At least I survived. At least I’m in control. At least I can stand here, soft skin and brown eyes and at least I’m there to catch you when you fall-- literally.

At the end of the day, every mark and memory is a battle scar, and I’ll keep inventory of yours if you’ll do the same for mine.

But these days we’re getting tired, and I’m getting worried. As the years go by, you’re installing more and more cupholders on your machines, and your words are slurred more often than not. I’m worried that sooner or later our rosé will turn to red, and I don’t know which one of us will end up getting hurt.

How many times do I have to tell you that you’re running out of second chances?

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know if you thought this was any good! I don't write a lot of Marvel stuff but I love these guys.


End file.
